"Yes, sir," she says quietly. "- If Sue could also link the admirals commanding those fleets where they are -"

"It's been suggested," he says. "If he has the range, it could be a good idea. Besides, of course, the obvious problem with keeping uninformed students in a mental link with people they aren't supposed to know exist."

"Can we communicate directly with the fleet officers before they appear on the sim?" she asks, her mind racing. "Do they even know who's commanding them? How much risk is there of a ship going rogue and just not responding to our controls in the middle of a battle because its pilot thinks we're being idiots?"

"No more risk than there is in any military operation," he says. "Which is damn little. What would you want to say to the fleet officers before they appear on the sim?"

"It's not zero, sir, this operation in particular has already had a problem with getting orders obeyed. As for what to say - Hey, have any of your ships been slightly damaged by space dust? Are all your FTL communicators working normally? Are any of your crews suffering from morale problems that could make them move slower or contradict orders? Do you know more about the terrain than we do, do you have any bright ideas? Who's been in space for forty years and has a baby on board by now, we can put them in the back!"

"Graduates of the I.F. apparently invite sixteen-year-old boys who have recently thrown hissy fits to command distant fleets without telling him that those fleets are anything more significant than virtual toys until after he's already fought one."

"Unfortunately," he says, "we can't change the schedule of the battles. The fleets arrive when they arrive. Hissy fit included, your friend with you as backup was still our best bet."

"Okay. But - we're not buggers, sir, we can use the brains on those ships if you let us talk to them, we can subdivide more and give them their own missions so we're not spread so thin, Sue can link a lot more than eight people if he can reach that far, and I don't share your opinion of their uniform machinelike adherence to their orders regardless of morale anyway."

"Your simulators can also take direct control of their ships," he says. "You only have to worry about them disobeying verbal orders. And I still don't think you need to worry about them disobeying verbal orders."

"Are you actually unconvinced of the usefulness of communicating with them, sir, or are you just not allowed to let me and you're hoping I'll agree with you before you have to tell me flat no so I don't show up to the next battle disgruntled?"

"I'm unconvinced of the usefulness of communicating with them and not looking forward to arranging it if you somehow convince me," he says. "The simulator system is very well designed, and it's not designed for the kind of communication you're thinking about."

"But when we do issue verbal orders, human beings hear them, it's not a sophisticated natural language processor," she says. "Okay. That's useful."

"Yes," he says. "Sure."

"I'd like it in writing that I solicited permission to talk to the fleet officers, sir, and that you denied it, in case something comes up that could have been mitigated with such communication channels," Aegis says, suddenly bright.

"I'd like you to go away," he says dryly.

"Sir," says Aegis cheerfully, "it's an IF bylaw that you must reproduce any orders that are not urgent on a scale of minutes in writing on request."

"Kid," he says, "if we do something wrong here, the material consequence will be the buggers killing us all. That's enough to keep me up at night already. I'm not interested in your power plays."

"I'm not making a power play, sir. I've stopped arguing with you entirely about the object level. If you're wrong, but not so wrong for the situation to be irrecoverable, and you get fired, I want whoever replaces you to have a paper trail that shows that I have historically not been an idiot and should be listened to in any future matters that may come up, so that we can not die."

"I'm not going to get fired."

"I'm sure you think so, sir. I'd like the refusal in writing anyway, and I am entitled to it anyway."

"And you're not getting it," he says. "Anything else?"

"Sir, it is now abundantly clear to me that you and others who are in miscellaneous positions as my superior officers are willing to break international and military law in order to get me and Sue to do what you want. Why should I believe that fleets of soldiers who have been en route for however many years of subjective time will not decide to do the same thing, if ordered into a position that's not immediately, visibly valuable by someone whose voice clearly signifies that we're half their age?"

"Because you are their superior officer," he suggests. "And the entire premise of the IF school system is that being half their age doesn't make you any worse of a commander."

"There have got to be hundreds of people in some of these fleets, any of whom could throw an operation off if they so chose, and all of them belong to a species that produced, for example, Sue. I am not convinced, sir, that the laws governing following lawful orders will hold up any better than the laws governing requisition of written copies, if we find that we have to order some fraction of a fleet into a suicide mission, or if one of us makes a mistake and is heard to say something inopportune by the survivors, or if someone has, as I suggested earlier, a baby on board - those little birth control chips are very effective, but statistically stranger things have happened. If I am not a worse commander because I am fifteen years old, sir - if I and Sue, and not you, are the correct choice for commanding our actual invasion fleet - then I want every resource I can think of to requisition, before I need it so it's there if and when I do, and if you get in my way, sir, then I want you to take responsibility for that choice, obey the law, and write it the fuck down just so you're clear on what you are doing. I have not been just some fifteen-year-old student who should be denied things by default since I was sat down in front of instruments that controlled real ships against live, unfriendly fire."